Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Kimberly's Room is the newest restaurant from Nanny's Pavillon. It was opened last September in Plaza Indonesia. I just adore the unique concept of this restaurant. It really makes me feel like I'm in a girl room with a high concern of beauty details. You can tell directly from all those beautiful hanging clothes, gorgeous shoes, pretty bags, replica of mirror dressing tables and even also a big box of cosmetics.

Open kitchen.

For this year Christmas season, Nanny's Pavillon is presenting "The Home Sweet Christmas Menu":

Cubes of Australian beef cooked in sizzling oil with selection of sauteed vegetables and three kind of homemade dipping sauces (pepper, cheese, and brown sauces). It's a bit sinful after eating the Garden Sirlion Steak but I just couldn't resist to eat this delicious beef fondue (of course, I shared with other food bloggers who were invited to this food tasting event).

Maiya's Choco Mallow - Rp. 29.000

Nothing beats a cup of hot chocolate with float melted marshmallow during cold weather or rainy season :)

There is also Home Sweet Christmas Gift where you can have it for every minimum purchase of Rp. 250.000 or if not, for a minimum purchase of Rp. 68.000, you just need to add Rp. 38.000 to get one of the gift items.

Sweet Scented Potpourri

available on 1 - 2 December and 7 - 9 December 2012

Christmas Hamper

available on 14 - 16 December 2012

Home Sweet Cushion

available on 21 - 25 December 2012

All prices excluding tax and service.

Current currency: 1 USD = Rp. 9.600

Beside all these, Nanny's Pavillon is going to held an event called "One Hug Thousands of Love Asia Charity Tour" from 20 - 25 December 2012 throughout 10 outlets in Jakarta and Bandung. This event is a Free Hug campaign during Christmas. It's all about delivering love and care between Santa Claus and customers. Every hug given, customer will get a piece of Royce Chocolate and a chance to take a photo with the Santa Claus. This event is supported by Royce Chocolate.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Pasta de Waraku is one of my favorite places for having fusion Japanese pasta and pizza. I was pretty intrigued when I received an invitation from Pasta de Waraku to try their new special menu - Indonesian Feast with a Twist, which they claimed as a unique twist to Japanese dishes with the richness of Indonesian taste that will tantalize the buds.

Together with some other food bloggers and media, we tried the below dishes:

Thin crust Pasta de Waraku pizza topped with baked salmon in curry sauce sprinkled with slice of chili, cucumber and onion. As usual, I enjoyed the thin crispy crust though I wish the topping could taste richer.

Pasta

Beef Spaghetti with Rendang Sauce - Rp. 58.000

Not your average beef spaghetti, instead of standard bolognese sauce, they use rendang sauce which is famous known for its richness flavors and also with mince beef and quail eggs. Good thing that the rendang was not as spicy as I expected.

Fried Oxtail ala Java - Rp. 65.000

Spaghetti aglio e olio cooked with Wafu sauce, completed with fried oxtail and red bell pepper. Frankly speaking, I was not really keen to see the red chili paste on the top of this spaghetti aglio e olio.

Traditional Fried rice with Angus beef - Rp. 65.000

The authentic taste of Indonesian traditional fried rice cooked with salted fish and shrimp paste. For the combination with Japanese dishes , use Angus beef in Teriyaki sauce and also completing with egg on top. The Angus beef was nice. The fried rice was tasty but too spicy because of the chili seeds.

Indonesian Grilled Ribs Spaghetti - Rp. 65.000

Spaghetti Aglio Olio cooked with Wafu sauce, completed with grilled ribs and fried white onion. Also served with 2 types of chili paste: red chili and green chili. If you are a chili lover, you will definitely love this dish but for me, after I ate a spoon of it, my lips and tongue felt like they were on fire :(

Strawberry Cheesecake Milkshake - Rp. 28.000

I need milk to cool down my lips and tongue.

Grilled Chicken Spaghetti- Rp. 58.000

Signature Spaghetti aglio Olio cooked with Wafu sauce, completed with juicy grilled chicken covered chili paste on top. I didn't try this one because I still felt the burning sensation on my lips and tongue :(

Dessert

Baby Hanito - Rp. 32.000
Juicy Fruits (left)

Banana Crumble (middle)

Candyland (right)

The name "Baby Hanito" really represents the size of it. It's a 6 cubes
of honey toast with toppings. For the toppings, I still prefer the ones that
are put on those classic Hanito like Hanito
Macha Red Bean and Hanito Earthquake.

All prices are subjected to service charge and PB1 tax.

Current currency: 1 USD = Rp. 9.600

At the end of this food tasting, it was hard for me to enjoy the food because I'm not a chili person. There are so many Indonesian food without chili. Why all these pastas and pizza need to have chili? Does food with chili really represent Indonesian food? I understand a lot of people love chili but there are people and also children who can not tolerate it. I guess it would be wise to add other non chili pasta and pizza with Indonesian twist to the menu.

Disclaimer: The review and opinion expressed here are purely according to my personal taste. There's a possibility that the taste of the food might change later on, which could affect the review and opinion here. I also affirm that no monetary or non-monetary compensation has been received from this restaurant for writing this review.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

As a food blogger these days, there are quite a lot of food-tasting invitations. It's almost like every week, there is another invitation or request for food product review in my inbox. It's always interesting to test out food at a new place, not only because we can try and review the food, meet new people, but also because we can share our experiences of how the restaurant treated us, the food bloggers.

One such recent experience was when I was invited by Yellowfin, a Japanese restaurant located near the SCBD area. Three weeks ago, I received an email with a subject "Intimate Blogger Lunch Gathering With Yellowfin" from the OPCO media relationship assistant. That email was more likely an introduction letter of the company that owns Yellowfin. At the end of it, it mentioned I should contact them to RSVP, but didn’t specify any date for this lunch gathering. I emailed them asking when this event would be held. Later on, I got the reply for a date that I couldn't come. Fortunately, the date was changed and I found out, Dino also received the invitation, thus we decided to go together.

We arrived exactly at 1 pm, the appointment time, with hungry tummies. The restaurant was really swarming with people. To our surprise, the waitresses who greeted us had completely blank expressions when we told them that we had come for food-tasting invitation. Obviously, the management didn't inform anyone at all that we were coming. Luckily, we managed to get one of the last two tables available, where we could sit and wait while they were cross-checking with the management. It took almost 30 minutes of waiting before the restaurant manager came to us.

A few minutes later, we were served two dishes. Dino and I really enjoyed them. They were really delicious.

Grilled Black Cod Marinated with Saikyo Miso for 2 nights, was so appetizing.

After the two dishes, we waited 15 minutes for other dishes to come out but nothing was served anymore on our table. I called the restaurant manager, asked him what would be the next dish. I was stunned when the restaurant manager told me that he was only instructed to serve two dishes for us. I briefly told the restaurant manager that usually for food-tasting invitations, either we choose by ourselves from the menu or the restaurant prepares a set menu starting with an appetizer, followed by main course and dessert. The restaurant manager called the management for a confirmation. Anyway, I talked to him again and said if this is the restaurant’s policy to only serve two kind of dishes to be reviewed, it was fine for us. But the restaurant manager said that he would serve us some other more dishes.

Despite the mishap of the miscommunication in the beginning of the food-tasting experience, the restaurant manager made up for those issues by overly generous and kind, insisting us to try other kinds of dishes, even beyond what we expected. I was really impressed by the hospitality that we received from the restaurant manager.
The food in general was quite good, although there was nothing really to shout about except for the first two dishes, which were the highlight dishes of this food-tasting

Tobiko Wakame Salad - Rp. 42.000

Flying Fish Roe and Seaweed Salad with Shoyu Onion Dressing.

Dory Chili Garlic Sauce - Rp. 65.000

Deep Fried Dory with Chili Garlic Sauce.

Ebi Harumaki - Rp. 48.000

Deep Fried Prawn & Mushroom Springroll with Wasabi Cocktail Sauce.

Hot! Shoyu Ramen - Rp. 55.000

Spicy Chicken Shoyu Ramen (level 2)

This level 2 spiciness used six chilies. Frankly speaking, I couldn't eat it at all because the fiery taste of the chilies.

Volcano Roll - Rp. 40.000

Deep Fried Shrimp Roll with Chopped Fish and Spicy Mayonnaise Sauce.

Green Tea Ogura Dorayaki - Rp. 60.000

Cold Ocha - Rp. 20.000

Porco Rosso - Rp. 35.000

Blackberry syrup, Cranberry juice, Soda water and Grapefruit juice

Castle in the Sky - Rp. 35.000

Peach puree, Peach syrup, Soda water and Grapefruit juice

Sake and Shochu

(Note: Shochu is a Japanese clear distilled spirit similar to vodka. The main difference between sake and shochu: sake is brewed, whereas shochu is distilled.)